Monthly Archives: December 2013

“Talk to any Syrian you meet on the Syrian-Turkish border these days, and in less than five minutes the conversation is likely to turn to Da’ash—the Arabic acronym for the rebel organization known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria, or ISIS…he group beheaded three Alawites in the city’s central square, and established sharia courts and policing…Women have been told to cover up, smoking banned, and girls and boys segregated in school. Minorities have been hounded out of the city, and foreign journalists and aid workers are no longer welcome: dozens are currently in ISIS captivity…ISIS originated as an Iraq-based al-Qaeda affiliate, al-Qaeda in Iraq…ISIS’s vision is phenomenally popular with hardline jihadists and their supporters…Fundraising campaigns on Twitter…indicate that significant money is coming to ISIS from private donors in the Gulf…A large majority of foreign fighters who have entered Syria come through Turkey”

“At both the FBI and CIA, there were files thick with memos and other documents detailing connections between the Saudi hijackers and Saudi officials and agents in at least seven US cities…There was so much Saudi-related evidence that it took 28 pages just for Hill investigators to summarize it all…The Saudis have a history of turning a blind eye to the extremists among them, funding radical mosques as a way of placating their population and keeping themselves in power…”

“…most of them spend a considerable portion of their time clamoring for more and stricter sanctions against Iran, something that has little to do with their stated organizational mission statements that include social justice, equality, human rights, and the well-being of the Jewish people.”
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“Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC)…was ranked “by far the most overpaid CEO” according to the Forward‘s Salary Survey..Hier has been in the forefront of promoting analogies between contemporary Iran and Nazi Germany. Amid warnings that a 2006 rumor that Jews in Iran would be forced to wear yellow badges was untrue…”

Juan Cole is Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. For three decades, he has sought to put the relationship of the West and the Muslim world in historical context.

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Cole commands Arabic, Persian and Urdu and reads some Turkish, knows both Middle Eastern and South Asian Islam. He lived in various parts of the Muslim world for nearly 10 years, and continues to travel widely there. A bibliography of his writings may be found here.

“”We wouldn’t rule out the possibility of meeting with the Islamic Front,” State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said Monday. “We can engage with the Islamic Front, of course, because they’re not designated terrorists … ”
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“Soon after its creation, the Islamic Front signed a charter that made it clear the group aimed to create a Sunni theocracy, not a Western-style democracy. The documentrejected the prospect of any sort of representative government, arguing that in Islam, only “God is the sovereign.” It explicitly rejects secularism as “contradictory to Islam,” and argues that Syria’s ethnic and religious minorities can be protected on the basis of Islamic law. ”
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“Zahran Alloush, the Islamic Front’s military chief,has demonized Syria’s Alawite minority and called for them to be cleansed from Damascus. As he put it in a recent video: “The jihadists will wash the filth of the rafida [a slur used to describe Shia] from Greater Syria, they will wash it forever, if Allah wills it.””

“By solely relying on big media, we’re left to believe that Netanyahu, the rightwing settlers and his coalition of ultras have little or no serious political opposition inside Israel…”
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“An array of the most experienced former intelligence and security veterans, such as ex- Mossad director Meir Dagan, ex-Military Intelligence Director former Shin Bet Director Yuval Diskin, the IDF’s former chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi and former Military Intelligence Director Amos Yadlin and his predecessor Maj.Gen. Aharon Ze-evi-Farkash have all resisted Netanyahu’s tirades and oppose an Israeli attack on Iran.”
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“In the midst of the thorny Palestinian and Iranian issues, Nelson Mandela died. Unlike a huge number of heads of state, Netanyahu did not attend the memorial ceremony because, as The Times of Israel reported, “the financial and logistical outlays” were too expensive for a trip to Johannesburg. South African Jews reacted negatively by making clear that a great opportunity had been missed since Israel had been a good friend of South Africa’s apartheid government.”

The US government has repeatedly and publicly denied that Levinson was in Iran on behalf of any government agency. As recently as 26 November, the White House issued a statement acknowledging Levinson as one of the “longest-held Americans in history”, reiterating a commitment to bring him home, and imploring the aid of Iran.

That statement, issued by White House press secretary Jay Carney, said Levinson went missing on “a business trip”.